From Ruth Samuels, Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, UK
Am I alone in finding highly distressing the report into how to achieve successful pup delivery in oxytocin-deprived mice? Many of these mice and their pups are reported to have died without the assistance of an experienced mouse midwife. Pain and distress must have accompanied these deaths (29 November, p 13).
While experiments using non-human animals may be required for medical research, there appears to be no such justification in this case. Proving that oxytocin-deprived mouse mothers and their pups need and attract the assistance of an experienced cage companion seems not to equal the distress likely to have been caused.
